Brain in a Dish Flies Plane - Thursday, October 28
Discovery Channel :: News :: Brain in a Dish Flies Plane
Oct. 22, 2004 - A University of Florida scientist has created a living "brain" of cultured rat cells that now controls an F-22 fighter jet flight simulator.
Scientists say the research could lead to tiny, brain-controlled prosthetic devices and unmanned airplanes flown by living computers.
And if scientists can decipher the ground rules of how such neural networks function, the research also may result in novel computing systems that could tackle dangerous search-and-rescue jobs and perform bomb damage assessment without endangering humans.
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Ok, this is really cool but here's something more interesting. The brain research they've been doing gave them the ability to teach a rat brain how to fly a jet. Humans only (on average) use about ten percent of their brains in daily activity. What if this research discovered how to unlock the other 90%? I can only imagine what we would be capable of...
1 Comments:
On October 28, 2004 10:35 PM,
Hayitzmeee said...
Ryan in responce to your latest science post I decided to post one of my own. Lil' Hobbits wandering on a deserted island thousands of years ago is much cooler than rats.
Love Ya! Dad
-- In a breathtaking discovery, scientists working on a remote Indonesian island say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.
One tiny specimen, an adult female measuring about 3 feet tall, is described as "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.
This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants.
She is the best example of a trove of fragmented bones that account for as many as seven of these primitive individuals. Scientists have named the new species Homo floresiensis, or Flores Man. The specimens' ages range from 95,000 to 12,000 years old.
"So the 18,000-year-old skeleton cannot be some kind of 'freak' that we just happened to stumble across," said one of the discoverers, radiocarbon dating expert Richard G. Roberts of the University of Wollongong in Australia.
Flores Man was hardly formidable. His grapefruit-sized brain was about a quarter the size of the brain of our species, Homo sapiens. It is closer in size with the brains of transitional prehuman species in Africa more than 3 million years ago
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